In recent weeks, opportunistic charter school adversaries have been having a field day - using state budget crunches and low test scores to fuel the anti-charter fire. In Massachusetts, for example, the state Senate passed a three-year moratorium on the creation or expansion of charter schools, claiming that they are "draining" limited funds from the public school system. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Francis X. Clines argued that the lack of state oversight and control over the spending and operation of charter schools in Texas has led to sub-par schools which unfairly divert "shrinking public funds to private experimentation." The evidence? That 25 of the 200 charter schools that exist in Texas have "gone under or have been closed for management abuses." And, yesterday, a Washington Post editorial questioned the value of charters by citing a comment by school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz to the effect that "over 50 percent of our charter schools are now failing." (Why the Post singled out charter schools when over 75 percent of D.C. students do not have basic reading skills is unclear.)
Behind these "new" revelations is a lot of political opportunism by charter opponents, deploying as truths the same tired misconceptions about the role that charter schools play in education reform. The fact that 25 low-performing or poorly managed charters closed in Texas in the relatively short time such schools have existed attests to the strength of the accountability measures that exist for charters. How many failing traditional public schools have been closed in the same time period? Such a line of argumentation is proof that champions of the status quo still cling to the discredited idea that it's better to pay indefinitely for life support than to pull the plug on a failing school. Furthermore, though Clines says that "early assessment tests are finding that public schools are outperforming charter schools by nearly a two to one margin," he and other critics do not take into account the fact that charters in most places, particularly Texas, serve a disproportionately disadvantaged student body. Thus, a more accurate measure of the value and effectiveness of these schools would be how much improvement students make from year to year.
The charter school movement emerged out of a need for a different kind of education reform. Traditional public schools, particularly those serving poor and minority students, have built a long record of failing our children while resisting badly needed reforms. Charter schools, along with other alternatives, emerged as a way to help students escape these low-performing schools. The distortions and selective examples that have filled the news in recent months should not be allowed to obscure a basic truth: there are many more shining examples of successful charter schools than failures-and many of the success stories are found in urban areas where students have few options other than failing, poorly managed public schools.
"Senate OK's block to charter schools," by Anand Vaishnav and Nicole Fuller, Boston Globe, May 31, 2003
"Charter schools choke on rulebook," by Joe Mathews, Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2003
"Re-educating the voters About Texas' schools," by Francis X. Clines, New York Times, June 3, 2003
